Snakes, Sedge, a Horizontal Rainbow and a Solar Eclipse: the Year in Nature

The Island paused amid the bustle of an August day, with strangers gathering to gaze skyward at a partial solar eclipse. Back on planet Earth, amateur botanists found something to marvel at right underfoot, with the discovery of a rare plant growing in obscurity along the shores of Sengekontacket Pond.

On August 21, Islanders donned protective glasses to take part in a national event: a solar eclipse that left some parts of the country in total darkness as the moon obscured the sun. The Vineyard was far from the path of totality, so the solar show was less spectacular but still striking. For about two and a half hours people were able to watch the moon move across the sun, which was 65 per cent obscured at the peak of the eclipse.

Protective glasses were a hot commodity, and people gathered on beaches, in driveways and at outdoor cafes to share their glasses and witness the solar show. Some gazed upward through makeshift sunspotters made of cereal boxes. Island libraries also were gathering places, with live-streams of the total eclipse and even high-tech solar telescopes.

The obscured sun cast crescent moon shadows through tree leaves, and the midday sun dimmed. By 4 p.m. it was a regular summer day again on the Vineyard.

Long-legged visitor from the south: black-necked stilt was seen in August.
— Lanny McDowell

June brought a more unexpected event in the sky: a peculiar high-altitude rainbow known as a circumhorizontal arc, that ran parallel to the horizon. The rare rainbow was seen over Lambert’s Cove and above farms in West Tisbury. It was caused by sunlight passing through high-altitude ice crystals.

An unassuming plant named Brown sedge (Carex disticha) caused a stir when it was discovered growing along the shore of Sengekontacket Pond in Edgartown. It marked the first time the plant had been found in the United States. Gregory Palermo and Margaret Curtin, amateur botanists and Polly Hill Arboretum volunteers, first found the brown sedge in June 2016. The news became widespread when a report on the discovery was published in a scientific journal in August.

The sedge likely arrived on the Vineyard long ago aboard a cargo ship from Europe to North America, a stowaway in the straw used as packing material and animal bedding. The plant is native to Northern and Western Europe.

“This tells me that if people look, they’re going to find interesting plants right under their noses,” Mr. Palermo said.

Liz Baldwin holds a black racer snake named Katama, who is about to be released back into the wild.
— Jeanna Shepard

In March a dead fisher — a large mammal in the weasel family — washed up on the north shore, the first documented sighting of the species on the Island. Biologists agreed that the animal likely had become caught in a current.

An overflow crowd came out to hear shark biologist Greg Skomal talk about white shark research around the Cape and Islands. A cold-stunned Kemp’s ridley turtle that washed up at Cape Pogue in December was given a second chance with the help of Island naturalist Gus Ben David and a team of volunteers and biologists that rescue hundreds of the endangered turtles every year.

No bow in this rainbow: circumhorizontal arc was seen in June.
— Jenifer Strachan